Thursday 11th June
Up early off to Pikes Peak Motorsports hopefully to collect my chain and sprockets, got talking to Canaan and got some great advice on white water rafting and some good rides in the area also got talking to the general manager Chris who was also full of useful information and has given us some good info on micro brewery's. Sadly there had been a bit of a mix up and they had not got the chain and sprockets in stock. They phoned around at the other 4 BMW dealers in Colorado but none had the parts we needed. I asked Chris if I could find the parts could i use their chain splitting tool to fit the chain on the bike, he was more than happy for me to do so. So off to Starbucks for some WiFi and a coffee, whilst on the phone and Internet a guy got chatting to us because of our accents, as luck would have it he had a Polaris dealership and had a few contacts. He eventually got hold of a one man band called Bavarian Motorcycles who had the chain and sprockets. We then rode 50 miles through horrendous storms the hail was so bad we had to pull over to the side of the road as we could not see a thing. We tried 3 times to get going as it would die down a little but as soon as we got going it became to painful but on the third time we got through to the edge.
Finding the place was fun as he worked from a garage down an ally way at the back of someone's house and while turning the bike around on a cambered road I lost my footing and dropped us on the deck seriously damaging my pride. Parts loaded on the bike we headed back to Colorado Springs to fit the chain and sprockets. The guys at Pikes Peak Motorsports were great as it was raining they let me wheel the bike inside as well as lending me their chain link tool. Now the bike is as good as new. Well nearly still need to get some brake pads but not for a few more miles.

Once checked in at a Motel we headed off to the local a supermarket whilst inside the heavens had opened yet again and the roads were like rivers and the spray off the cars o the other side of the road was more like a wall of water.

Friday 12th June
Got up this morning to heavy rain checked the forecast and Colorado Springs and Denver were said to be wet wet wet. We decided to follow the sun and head north west and towards Jackson Hole in Wyoming to do a spot of white water rafting instead of sitting around waiting for the weather to maybe improve. We went through Denver to one of the other BMW dealers to pick up the brake pads and headed on out through the mountains once out of Denver the sun was out in its full glory not a cloud in sight, we climbed to around 10000 ft along side a very fast flowing river on some fantastic roads, it became quite cold at times but we were only up high for a short time. We stopped off at Winter Park for a spot of lunch but realised it was 1700hrs so thought perhaps we should find a place to stop, it was way to expensive in Winter Park so we road on until we found a small town called Hot Sulphur Springs where we found a great little Motel and a hot springs. Once checked in and the bike unloaded we went in to town to the springs for a soak. The town was really a small village and they were having a festival weekend, they had various activities through the evening and a local band playing so after our hot soak we took a stroll downtown grabbed a few beers and listened to some live music. It was a really good atmosphere no more than about 100 people, probably the whole village lol.

Saturday 13th June
Woken up early by a strange phone ringing, it wasn't one of ours we eventually found what it was. It was the motel owners hands free phone that they had left in the room. We found it last night when we tried to use it to change the channels on the TV.
Heading off towards to Jackson Hole today in beautiful sunshine up here in the Rockies.
We had a good route planned but had decided not to do any unpaved roads as my rear tyre is lacking in the tread department. As we turned off of highway 40 on to route 318 there was a sign warning us 120 miles to the next services. Checked my mileage and had at least 135 miles of Petrol so carried on after about 40 miles the road turned into an unpaved road and no longer showed on the sat nav. Not having a paper map I almost turned around but decided to keep going on what looked like the main road, it turned out I took the wrong turn and added about 20 miles to our trip, it took us to highway 191 instead of in to Rock Springs but as we were traveling much slower on the dirt I was getting better mileage so we just made it to our destination. All in though a great days riding there were some serious looking clouds off to our left that got quite close but thankfully not close enough to dump on us. Think it would of been very interesting on the unpaved roads in the rain.

Sunday 14th June
We had a reasonably short ride to Jackson Hole Wyoming. Clear blue sky's all the way but perfect riding temperature, the town is very touristy but pleasant we are hoping to do some horse riding while we are here before we go through Yellow Stone. We stopped in town for a spot of lunch and they have a local brewery, tried a pint with lunch and to my surprise it was a good pint still to fizzy.

Monday 15th June
It was only a short 20 mile ride to the ranch and the weather looked like it was going to be perfect until we got there and it then looked like rain. The first hour of the horse ride was really good, although the sun kept hiding behind the clouds and we got a couple of spots of rain. The second hour my hips and knees started to ache and we had a mix of rain, hail and sun. By the time we got back I could not wait to get off the horse.